Fatal Attraction: How Bacterial Adhesins Affect Host Signaling and What We Can Learn from Them

The ability of bacterial species to colonize and infect host organisms is critically dependent upon their capacity to adhere to cellular surfaces of the host. Adherence to cell surfaces is known to be essential for the activation and delivery of certain virulence factors, but can also directly affect host cell signaling to aid bacterial spread and survival. In this review we will discuss the recent advances in the field of bacterial adhesion, how we are beginning to unravel the effects adhesins have on host cell signaling, and how these changes aid the bacteria in terms of their survival and evasion of immune responses. Finally, we will highlight how the exploitation of bacterial adhesins may provide new therapeutic avenues for the treatment of a wide range of bacterial infections.     

Malic acid production from renewables: a review

Malic acid derived from fossil resources is currently applied in the food and beverage industries with a medium global production capacity. However, in the transition from a fossil-based to a bio-based economy, biotechnologically produced l -malic acid may become an important platform chemical with many new applications, especially in the field of biopolymers. In this review, currently used petrochemical production routes to dl -malic acid are outlined and insights into possible bio-based alternatives for microbial l -malic acid production are provided. Besides ecological reasons, the possibility to produce enantiopure l -malic acid by microbial fermentation is the biggest advantage over chemical synthesis. State-of-the-art and open challenges concerning production host engineering, substrate choice and downstream processing are addressed. With regard to production hosts, a literature overview is given covering the leading natural production strains of Aspergillus, Ustilago and Aureobasidium, as well as Escherichia coli as the most important engineered recombinant host. The utilization of renewable substrates as an alternative to glucose is emphasized in particular as a key aspect for a competitive bio-based production. Out of the alternative substrates discussed in this review, the industrial side-streams crude glycerol and molasses seem to be most promising for large-scale l -malic acid production. © 2019 The Authors. Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.     

Prominent consequences of role stress: A meta-analytic review.

Role stress has received a lot of research attention in psychological, sociological, and organizational studies over the last several decades. Based on a literature review of about 300 journal articles, this article examines prominent consequences of role stress. Specific focus is on researching differences in relationships between facets of role stress (i.e., role ambiguity, role conflict, and role overload) and frequently cited consequences using techniques of meta-analysis. Findings indicate that each role stress facet has a different relationship with the eight consequences studied. Role stress research can benefit from looking at each facet individually in addition to role stress generally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Atomistic simulations of grain boundary migration in copper

While the motion of twist boundaries can be readily studied by atomistic simulations with molecular dynamics (MD) under the action of an elastic driving force, the approach fails for tilt boundaries. This is due to the interaction of the elastic stress with the grain boundary (GB) structure, which causes plastic strain by GB sliding. A novel concept, the orientation correlated driving force, is introduced to circumvent this problem. It is shown that this concept can be successfully applied to the study of the migration of tilt boundaries. The migration behavior of several twist and tilt GBs was investigated. The transition from low-to high-angle boundaries can be captured, and a structural transition of tilt boundaries was found at high temperatures, which also affected the migration behavior. The results compare well with experimental results of the motion high-angle boundaries, but for low-angle boundaries, the agreement is poor. This article is based on a presentation made in the “Hillert Symposium on Thermodynamics & Kinetics of Migrating Interfaces in Steels and Other Complex Alloys,” December 2–3, 2004, organized by The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.     

Efficient Low Dissipative High Order Schemes for Multiscale MHD Flows, II: Minimization of ∇·B Numerical Error

An adaptive numerical dissipation control in a class of high order filter methods for compressible MHD equations is systematically discussed. The filter schemes consist of a divergence-free preserving high order spatial base scheme with a filter approach which can be divergence-free preserving depending on the type of filter operator being used, the method of applying the filter step, and the type of flow problem to be considered. Some of these filter variants provide a natural and efficient way for the minimization of the divergence of the magnetic field (∇·B) numerical error in the sense that commonly used divergence cleaning is not required. Numerical experiments presented emphasize the performance of the ∇·B numerical error. Many levels of grid refinement and detailed comparison of the filter methods with several commonly used compressible MHD shock-capturing schemes will be illustratedA condensed version appears in the Proceedings of the International Conference on High Performance Scientific Computing, March 10-14, 2003, Hanoi, Vietnam. This is a revised version of a longer internal report, Feb. 19, 2004. The longer internal report was published as a RIACS Technical Report TR03.10, July 2003, NASA Ames Research Center     

Cued recall from image and sentence memory: A shift from episodic to identical elements representation.

The applicability of the identical elements (IE) model of arithmetic fact retrieval (T. C. Rickard, A. F. Healy, & L. E. Bourne, 1994) to cued recall from episodic (image and sentence) memory was explored in 3 transfer experiments. In agreement with results from arithmetic, speedup following even minimal practice recalling a missing word from an episodically bound word triplet did not transfer positively to other cued recall items involving the same triplet. The shape of the learning curve further supported a shift from episode-based to IE-based recall, extending some models of skill learning to cued recall practice. In contrast with previous findings, these results indicate that a form of representation that is independent of the original episodic memory underlies cued-recall performance following minimal practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensor guided handling and assembly of active micro-systems

Positioning accuracies in the range of a few micrometers and below are necessary for the assembly of active micro-systems. In order to reach these accuracies, an assembly system for sensor guided micro-assembly is developed in the Collaborative Research Centre 516 “Design and manufacturing of active micro-systems”. The combination of a parallel robot with an integrated 3D vision sensor and a micro-gripper enables to reach relative positioning accuracies below 1 μm.     

E. H. Dirksens Beiträge zu den Grundlagen der Analysis

Enno Heeren Dirksen (1788–1850) was one of several mathematicians originating from Eastern Frisia at the end of the eighteenth century to acquire prominence in neohumanist reformed Prussia. While striving—like so many of his contemporaries—for more rigour in the foundations of calculus, his work is significant due to his unusual emphasis on the semiotic aspects of the basic concepts. As a clear-sighted propagator of Cauchy's conceptual innovations in Germany, his achievements in improving sign expressions of such concepts enabled him to clarify hitherto not differentiated multiple limit processes—although less successfully in constructive concept formation itself. The contribution is based on the analysis of Dirksen's published texts and on the numerous texts which remained drafts for his projected voluminousOrganon der gesamten Analysis.

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Menso Folkerts zum 60. Geburtstag gewidmet     

DISPERSION COMPENSATION CFBG IN100km 10Gbit／s RECIRCULATING SYSTEMS

A 10Gbit/s recirculating system is configured with Chirped Fiber Bragg Grating (CFBG) for the dispersion compensation. For the first time, the transmission distance in the loop reaches 1000km with bit error rate of 10-9. The effect of the group delay ripple of the fiber grating is also investigated in the recirculating systems, and it is shown that the transmission distance is limited to 4 cycles (4×167.1km ) in the loop with the power penalty fluctuation below 1.0dB. Thus the group delay ripple should be reduced to allow for the wavelength drift of±5GHz. At the end of this letter, the principles are given for designing long haul recirculating systems with dispersion compensation CFBG.